It feels like Christmas 2023 has come to an end. Our last big family gathering was yesterday. Lots of laughter, good food, singing and telling stories. It was after midnight when we pulled back into our driveway. Kids were sleepy and everyone hit the hay….. And then we woke up today. The dogs usually sleep in the basement. I made my way downstairs through a house that looked like a bomb went off in it. When I opened the door to let the dogs out, I was greeted with something less than a pleasant smell. Someone ate something, and it came out over night. I got the dogs out and cleaned up the mess. Got everybody set for food and water. And one of the dogs promptly threw up all over the floor. Welcome back to reality!

We have so many expectations, but in the aftermath of the holiday as most of us have some level of a down week, it is easy to feel a little disappointed. All the lights and presents and the feasting and fun… and then we end up standing amidst the poop and vomit. But isn’t that sort of the story of Christmas? Angels singing in the sky, wise men with their gifts, the star shining… and the next thing they know their on the run for Egypt with a psychotic murdering politician trying to kill them. Their lives get lived out in a backwater town called Nazareth full of people who get to spend 30 years with God, and then can’t recognize him. He calls together a band of faithful friends who all end up betraying him, turns the nation of Israel upside down, and ends up on a cross for his trouble. But God isn’t dead, and you can’t kill life. The stone is thrown back, the sun shines, the King steps from the tomb, the demons flee and all is well….. Except that now, 2000 years later, through the dark ages, the crusades, the black plague, untold numbers of natural disasters, multiple world wars and the rise and fall of one empire after another…. Somehow it doesn’t seem like what I was expecting. Something isn’t going the way I thought it would.

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Rom 8:19-21)

Read that again….. Sit a moment and think about it….. what does it even mean? The hope is for all this broken creation to be brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 

As you process your own post Christmas emotions, as you think about what you experienced, conversations that took place, and as you think about what’s next, what are you actually hoping for? Do you see your life and identity as a child of God? Is your life experience one of freedom and ever increasing glory? (Glory = displayed excellence”) Do you see your life bringing freedom and goodness to the broken creation we live in and are a part of?

Those are big questions. There aren’t easy, pat answers. This world seems stuck in cycles of renewal and self-destruction that reflect the brokenness of we people who inhabit it. Only God can make all things new, and quite frankly I wish he’d do it once and for all. But maybe He is. Maybe our perspective isn’t very clear, and maybe things aren’t quite the way we think they are. All creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. As God reveals himself to us we are transformed into what the scriptures call ever increasing glory. And the glory of God displayed through his transformed children heals and restores the world itself. So what is God revealing to you today? And how does he want to reveal himself to the world through you?